The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 26, 1925, Page 8

' } ' OUR EADQUARTERS of Local 22 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union of New York City they stay up all night and watch, to keep Sigman from capturing them by force, as they have captured Locals 2 and 9. A crowded street—policeman looking for trouble—a policeman with nothing to de. Enthusiasm—suppress- ed excitement everywhere, ‘Inside, nyore crowds,—more enthus- jas, A girl is talking. Let her tell her story in her own ‘words: * i 1910 we used to have the sweat shop system. At that time people used to sleep in shops and work long hours and terrible conditions—worked twelve or fourteen hours a.day, and even have their dinner at the machine while they worked. Since this was the case sanitary conditions were also terrible—no time even to sweep. We were there all week including Satur- day and Sunday. “In 1909 the waist makers, Local 25, called out a general strike and that strike lasted quite a few weeks. Peo- ple went thru a great deal of suffer- ing; there was really no union when the strike was called—just a handful of people, not organized. So the strike kept on a long time and was lost. But this was an inspiration to organize, because the girls put up such a good fight and were treated so rough that even the society ladies were inter- ested. “AFTER that the cloak makers’ union struck in 1910 and made a success. The union put out the de- mands for shorter hours and more pay. But then the boss would take a few workers and make one head over them, so that ome man had six or eight people under him. He would get all the wages from the. boss and pay to the workers, and he would try to get a certain amount and get fifty or sixty dollars a week while others oiwould get very, little. .So.,the boss Pada number, Pi workers who were “interested to keep things going that way. The union fought against that —this must be stopped— and they won. A “In 1913 the waist makers had a strike which again improved condi- tions of the industry, but one trouble right along was that the Jewish and Americans would not join together— we were foreigners, so to speak. There was only five per cent American ele- ment who always said: ‘Why go in? Why have a union? We can straight- en out with the boss ourselves.’ But I thought we should get American girls to approach the boss—I have a foreign accent—too difficult. We had one American girl who would go and try to talk, but if they refused to talk she was insulted and went home, Our girls didn’t feel that way. We know the boss won't talk because he don’t understand. “TN.1916 they got out a protocol—an so ugreement that impartial people boshould: decide. By that time there were already differences of opinion in the union. It really started when we began to differ on the methods. Some of us thought the officials were fak- ing; they called what they said was a regular strike, but some were sent back to work while ‘others were still striking. There were no Lefts and Rights then—youngsters they called us, instead of Lefts. “In the 1919 strike already we fear- ed it might be a fake again, and prob- ably it would have been but the em- ployers tried to give the union a beat- ing. They made an agreement for a | few hours, less, a few dollars more, but they began to send work out to small shops in secret. We would go and sit at the machine, but would not make the waists. The only thing —to refuse to work at all. “But the 1919 agreement made it a crime to make a stoppage, so we made six or eight or ten dollars a week for eight months.. The employers had work but we @id not make it. We could see what they were cutting and knew we didn’t get it. That was the beginning of our going backward,—an agreement binding us hand and foot te we could do was to make a : WN PEOPLE and not being able to do anything. It created the onen shop problem for us. The union kept back workers from striking nad they kept having open shops. What use of such an ag- reement which ties our hands? “TZIVER since then there has been the small little open shop—not the open shop so you immediately know where it is—but a hole in Har- lem, two rooms in the back of some yard, or downtown Green _ Street, where employers moved it, rotten, dir- ty, everything,—already something of the past. If they would take a nice big loft we would know about it, so they take little holes where we could not know and it would take us some time to find out. So our people are now working under the most miser- able conditions. no ventilation, no air, fire traps. The employers get those who have just come’ from the other side,—get them and teach them and exploit them to the worst extent because they do not know any better. “I was shop chairman. If I ordered a stoppage the employer had a perfect right to discharge me. But we said we would not work unless we see everytime they cut something we have it. So we made a stoppage in the shop and we managed it so that I didn’t get fired, either. The Associa- tion sent a letter demanding that either we be put back to work or send other workers on our jobs. The executive took it up and sent.a committee to make us go to work. We explained we cannot and will not work unless we know we get everything that is cut. We had gone back once or twice with the boss’s promise to give us everything, but always he cheated us. HERE was a conference in Bos- ton and I and two members of the executive went and explained the situation. The question is: Are we to sit eight months in a shop and not make a living? We had a fight and I cried,—I was so much younger then; the’strike; finally, the boss came and held up his hands, and said ‘Honor- able peace!’ and we came to an ag- reement, “These little shops became a great detriment. In the beginning a few here and a few there, and because the union did nothing to check them they sprang up everywhere, with these terrible conditions, competting with the big shop, and many employers went into jobbing so the big shop went out gradually,—safely to say more than one half the industry is —cockroach shops. shop, and with all pressing machines and everything, how can you have it sanitary? You will find that many of them are going into the business with $500 that they sometime borrow from loan associations and many of our people are losing their pay after working for a few weeks for such little employers. And, too; the unions have the problem of having to organ- ize five or six hundred new shops and also having many of our workers not only have to work in these miser- able conditions, but pay not secure— many lose-their last few cents. t ‘HAT can the union do to elimin- ate those conditions? They say: Yes, true, but we cannot do any- thing. We say: We have to begin to have another policy and see to it year round by our own people Not by those, as they have it, who are not of the trade. Up to 1919 our own people did organizing work. They would say to me: eight people to go to Brooklyn. And I would go. It was more quiet then; onée I had to hit a man with my um- brella, but I would do that only when necessary. “The managers used to get sixty or seventy dollars a week, and the busi- ness agents forty-five; now the gen- eral manager gets $125; the interna- tional manager gets $7,500 a year. Then he got $75. The business agent is the man who does the work. The managers do very little work; they I would notsery.t6day!:, (Her black, eyes flashed;.true, she would not cry | that jobbing. We call them bedréom shops_ “A room like this would be a big. that we do organization work all the|‘ We need six or] hire gangsters to do their work, and ‘che. only thing the gangsters do ir levelop their muscles. “Jur people refused to go with these people to picket lines. “A T the last campaign in January and February we made an ai: tempt,—we, the so-called Lefts, the people who want to see the organiza- tion again so that the people them- selves do the work—we made an at- tempt to get our own people to do or- ganization work again, If our people are going to go to the shops and work and picket and be told what to do, they can do their own organization work. “In January and February the Or- ganization Committee had 300 people who were teady to go to shops and explain to workers to come to the union. First talk. first explain, and then if no success, sometimes fight. but not like gangsters. If you get a little hurt, you know workers hurt you,— not gangsters. Since 1919 to date because of the many disappoint- ments that workers were suffering they did not feel like going into the shop and getting their heads split by these men, “Now many of the employers have turned into dresses instead of waists, SO we are no more a separate indus- try. When the waists were so glor- ious there were of course waist locals; now there is no reason for waists be- ing separate but the union wants to keep them separate and I'll tell you why, in a minute. We told the union this, but they said that there were still waists, showing that they did not know what they were doing. I took Fannia Cohn myself and showed her that there were almost no more waists, amd she was surprised; and I said to her: “You do not know what is going 6n in the industry; you are living in the past.’ 5 gate the waists are not there the Same- thing is true about the Akirt, and, yet, .they,.are still having yeah and the manager getting Week, and very few members, and their expenses about three or four hundred dollars a week, because the manager will not go to the shops and so they must have a business agent and a secretary. And they are making dresses in the same shops; the skirts are no more there. And they work fourteen hours more a week for the same work, and that is what T call legal scabbing with the consent of the union, which is a crime. There must not be two locals in the same trade; it is their’ own constitution and we have to demand that they live up to it. “Local 2 sent out to Chicago two weeks before the expulsion to demand that they give us the dress shops which belong to our local, according to their own decsion a year before. And now I'll tell you why they want waists and skirts separate—because 113 W. Washington Blvd. soeeseeeences: At eneee et eneweensnerenees. “RUSSIA TODAY” ooo. $1.25- The Daily Worker for 8 mos. (6 mos. in Chicago) .............. $4.50 THE DAILY WORKER For the enclosed $........csesssessersereseee gene RUSSIA TODAY and the DAILY WORKER for .............. months to: sttneOeeheeeeeeee SELSECEEEEDEOOETOOSESTESEN ETON ELODOLNSHEESenEewENERE SH eeeeEeEteEaeT® St0ene Seen eee Ren eenensen erenn Ee nenee erasers anes eoenenmens euEeeett ree: srescsesserseceeess SOALCS cccsesosssssionsnssnedensesescens By Rath Stout that makes more locals and every ocal has five votes, no matter how ‘ew or how many members. We have 12,000 members, and some of the locals have less than 500, and still they get five votes, And our dues pay their bills—but through the un- ion, and so the union controls their votes, because if it didn’t pay their bills, they couldn’t live, be Pedros thing is that they want- ed to raise our dues from 35 cents to 60 gents. The membership won't pay the fifty cents because they feel that nothing. will be done with the 50 cents just as nothing «is done for the 35 cents, And two weeks before they raised the dues they rais- ed the salaries of the business agents, managers, nad general managers, from $5 to $25 a Week more. That amounted to $50,000 a year.. What does this mean? They raise themselves, and we are not making half what they were making befdre they raised them- selves. What do they care? They have 55 votes and we have 15 in the Joint Board. “So we have three differences, First, we want our own people to do the organization work They should not give over our demands to Governor’s Commissions, who may be nice people but will not Know anything about our questions for the men and women who work in the industry. We feel they cannot do it because they do not understand our trade, and what we should do is to organize workers from the open shops and take the workers and come to employers and see that we get things just and fair. “Our second difference is that we want all dress locals to be one, in- Stead of fake waist and skirt shops with separate locals, paying big sal- aries to business agents and manag- ers and general managers shall have bigger salaries. “QECAUSE of these differences they went, and instead of giving an-. Swers to these just claims that we. have, instead of meetifig ft'and finding a way of settling it, they declared everyone Communists in order to cloud the issue, because they only have to say that we are Communists and everybody will be afraid of us, be- cause they infer a Communist fs not a human being. “And before they give us a chance o know that they have any charges on - us, a day before they sent us of- ficial notice that we are under charge, they broke in, in the middle of the night at two o'clock, they broke in » to two locals, 2 and 9, and took the. office by force. And that is why we watch here day and night, so they can’t do the same thing to us.” Wrap your lunch in a copy of the DAILY WORKER and give it (the DAILY WORKER, not the lunch) to your shop-mate. TODAY Chlieago, Iilinois senneneneren eeewe eee teeeecees